Artist Simon Denny Reflects on Berlin Art Programme

Co-founder of the Berlin Program for Artists (BPA) New Zealand-born Simon Denny, 39, (pictured right) explains why artists are essential to the fabric of Germany’s capital city in an article for UK art magazine, Frieze.

“When I graduated in 2009 and moved to Berlin, I was lucky enough to find myself in a very supportive environment, which I think was a feature of an art world at that time with more immediate commercial potential for younger artists,” Denny says. “Now the environment has fewer opportunities for graduates in the places where I received them when I started out here. We saw that gap and wanted to fill it by creating a slightly formalised infrastructure for young artists, which is content-based and goes back to the idea of exchange. In 2016, we set up a very informal version and then workshopped it each year to improve it.

“We recently started a friend circle as we realised that, even though we’re really visible to young artists, there might be more people out there who don’t know about us but would be interested in connecting with and supporting the programme. There are many tech start-ups and creative people working in Berlin and we think it could be interesting to bring these worlds together in some way or other.”

Since 2018, Denny has been a professor for time-based media at the HFBK Hamburg.

Original article by Frieze, December 16, 2020.

Photo by Piero-Chiussi.